"The first victory we can claim is that our hearts are free of hatred. Hence we say to those who persecute us and who try to dominate us: ‘You are my brother. I do not hate you, but you are not going to dominate me by fear. I do not wish to impose my truth, nor do I wish you to impose yours on me. We are going to seek the truth together’. THIS IS THE LIBERATION WHICH WE ARE PROCLAIMING."
Oswaldo José Payá Sardiñas (2002)

The public discussion surrounding cooperating with the dictatorship on counter-narcotics efforts goes back 25 years. Representative Charlie Rangel on July 3, 1989 in a letter to The New York Times started to make the case for the United States and the Castro regime to cooperate to stop regional drug trafficking. First General Manuel Noriega, an authoritarian dictator, that the U.S. shared drug intelligence with to counter drug trafficking and "showered with letters of commendation and grateful thanks by the Drug Enforcement Agency in Washington" was not what U.S. officials claimed in their official reports. Secondly, high ranking Cuban military and intelligence officials had just been revealed to be smuggling large quantities of cocaine into the United States. The timing to be advocating such a policy was on the surface madness. On the other hand it was a good first step in a propaganda campaign to white wash the Castro dictatorship's criminal complicity in the trafficking of hard drugs into the United States.

Placing this into context

General Noriega was revealed, by Florida prosecutors, to be involved in the smuggling of narcotics into the United States. Frontline in a chronology for the program Thirty Years of America's Drug War revealed that "Panamanian General Manuel Noriega and Pablo Escobar cut a deal which allows
Escobar to ship cocaine through Panama for $100,000 per load. The two had met
in 1981 when Noriega mediated negotiations for the release of Marta Ochoa.

"Federal prosecutors say Noriega traveled to Havana to ask [Fidel] Castro to
mediate a potentially deadly dispute with top members of Colombia`s
Medellin cocaine cartel. They say the cartel chiefs were upset because a
major drug lab had been seized in Panama despite payment of millions of
dollars in protection money to Noriega.
According to the Noriega
indictment, Castro negotiated a peace accord between the cartel and
Noriega at the 1984 meeting. The allegation forms a cornerstone of the
racketeering and drug trafficking charges against Noriega."